International Affairs

Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington Prince Turki al-Faisal warns senior NATO military officials that the existence of nuclear weapons in Iran "would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”

"We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don't. It's as simple as that," he said. "If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit."

There is only one way President Barack Obama can distinguish his tenure from Jimmy Carter’s and win reelection in 2012: Take out Iran’s bomb making capacity.

I wrote my editor friend in New York daily almost 10 years ago that I was watching Canada being born — the Creation Myth being the first game led by Hayley Wickenheiser as the Canadian women’s hockey team won gold against America in the Winter Olympics of 2002, with an even better night to follow when the men beat the Americans. From then on there has been a lot of downhill skiing for the U.S. But things keep looking up for Canada. Housing and the economy are booming. Canadian banking is the envy of the world and the Canadian dollar is at parity with the American. There is more to Canada today in foreign eyes than just good hockey, good manners, good government and Tim Hortons. There is oil.

There’s been a lot of criticism of Obama’s Afghanistan drawdown plan, from those who say it’s not enough to those who complain he’s bringing too many soldiers back too fast.

I think this means that he got it just right.

For weeks he has been dogged by a comment from an aide, reported in The New Yorker, that he was “leading from behind.” With the administration’s slow response to the Arab Spring, and by stepping back from a lead role in the Libya bombings, it looked like caution was the hallmark of the Obama “doctrine.”

Why is our president trying to create a constitutional crisis over the War Powers Act?

Under the act the president can engage in hostile activities for 90 days, or he needs congressional approval.

It is clear that the U.S. is engaged in hostile activities in Libya when it sends drones to bomb Gadhafi forces and military targets. It might be less clear when we're spending $10 million daily to support the NATO alliance in its aggression against Gadhafi.

It’s open season on the Europeans at the moment. Following the lead of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who delivered a stiff warning to NATO the other day, everyone has been piling on. The latest was an article in The Washington Post by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, under the provocative headline “Europe no longer matters.”

Nothing like kicking a man when he’s down. It must be said, the Europeans are an easy target. The other day in Washington, I heard Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) pointing out that the U.S. was subsidizing European social programs through its predominant financial contribution to NATO, as European military budgets declined. But here’s what I’m hearing in Europe at the moment: that America is weak.

Interesting how the Washington Post and New York Times labeled their brief notes about the current Hamas-Fatah dispute over who will be prime minister in their new joint government.

The Post’s caption was “Hamas-Fatah talks stall over key post” — a downer. The Times's caption for its coverage of the same subject was “Fatah and Hamas Leaders to Meet,” a positive perspective.

Both brief articles reported the same fact — that the two factions failed to agree on what the Post called “a prime ministerial pick.” That is obviously not good news about the ability of the new joint government to move forward in critical negotiations on behalf of the Palestinians it represents. The more upbeat New York Times comment was that the two party chiefs will meet in Cairo next week “to finalize the makeup” of the unity government. If they can’t agree on a prime minister, they might not make up.

In Libya, a tyrant turned his guns on his own people. The U.N. Security Council invoked the “responsibility to protect” and endorsed international military intervention to save the Libyan people from an imminent massacre.

In Syria, a tyrant has turned his guns on his own people. The U.N. Security Council is struggling to even formally condemn the actions that have left 1,400 people dead, according to human-rights groups, and led to some 4,000 Syrian refugees crossing the border into Turkey.

So whatever happened to R2P, as the doctrine has become known? R2P found its way into the history books in September 2005 when a world summit at the U.N. General Assembly declared that the international community should be ready to intervene if leaders are “manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

The recent outbreak of E. coli in the produce of the European Union started my thoughts down a path I hope I will never have to find the end of. What happens when I can no longer trust what I require for sustenance?

More than 2,000 people have fallen ill and more than a dozen have lost their lives due to the outbreak. I do my best to eat fresh fruits and vegetables as often as possible, and as a consumer with limited resources it would be out of the realm of possibility for me to test everything that I ate. For this reason we have a trust of our food suppliers that is born of the marketplace. We believe that our food suppliers will not sell us contaminated products if for no other reason than to protect their brand name.

The century ahead could be seen to have taken shape this past week with President Obama’s stunning claim — a wish, really — that Israel repeal 50 years of history and return to its indefensible 1967 borders. It was followed by an address yesterday by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that shook the halls of Congress. Obama then, traveling in Europe, where he feels most comfortable, brought forth an op-ed in The Times of London with England’s Prime Minister David Cameron, calling the “Arab Spring” a situation similar to the fall of the Soviet Union, and comparing themselves to be the modern-day Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Possibly this helped Netanyahu. His speech was greeted with roaring applause and dozens of standing ovations. For the first time in my memory, and Israeli leader appeared as an authentic American patriarch; a strong and ancient Father Abraham here to speak — to intervene, perhaps — on our behalf.

So much for President Obama’s constructive attempt to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to attempt a peace deal based on the principles of land swaps around the pre-war 1967 border and security, which would leave the thorniest issues of the status of Jerusalem and the return of refugees until later.

In his speech to the joint session of Congress today, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was back to his old statements of principles. He included his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and provided an energetic explanation of why his government would not accept a return to “1967 lines” that would leave Israel “half the width of the Washington Beltway,” or nine miles wide. He emphatically ruled out any division of Jerusalem, which he said “must remain the united capital of Israel.”